


A Happy Honeymoon, Cruelly Yorkshired

by Siria



Category: Bleak Expectations (Radio)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-10
Updated: 2010-12-10
Packaged: 2017-10-13 14:56:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/138597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a novelisation of the epic tale previously recounted on Her Britannic Majesty's Imperial Wireless Service.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Happy Honeymoon, Cruelly Yorkshired

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marginaliana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginaliana/gifts).



> With thanks to my lovely betas!

"— _as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted—"_

 _"I do apologise, Sir Philip. The device really never has done that before, but I am confident that if the maids use some steel wool, they should be able to get the stains out of the—"_

 _"—before I was so_ rudely interrupted, _in my accounts of my life thus far, I have passed over the years between the death of my evil ex-guardian, Mr Gently-Benevolent, and his return from the dead... for the first time. I have referred to that time only fleetingly, as those uneventful years enlivened only by a moderately illegal incident involving a horse and a balloon. Yet I feel now is the time to reveal what has previously remained as obscure as an Italian's courage—the tale of those weeks immediately following the marriage of my best friend, Harry Biscuit, to my beloved sister, Pippa. With the fortune I had amassed as the inventor of the bin, I treated them to a honeymoon in an exotic location—a place of taciturn natives and strange sights, where none of us knew the language and all of the food seemed as unpalatable as the thought of women getting the vote."_

 _"I say! Did you venture to Darkest Africa? The slopes of Macchu Picchu? The bustling bazaars of Bombay?"_

 _"No, no. To a place far stranger and more mysterious than any of those, Sourquill... Yorkshire._ "

In those days, far fewer people ventured into the north country than dare to do so today. Why, in these days of modern inventions, the train, the dirigible and the breech-loading blunderbuss have made Yorkshire accessible to all men of stout heart and steady aim. But when Harry, Pippa and I set out from London, all those years ago now, it was with a real sense of adventure—an awareness that we were truly setting out into the unknown.

“Dear brother Pip! How good it was of you to bring us here!” Pippa said. “Surely there is nothing in the Home Counties so wild and romantic, so unrefined and so free, as it to be found here in Yorkshire! Why, even the air seems more bracing here, somehow!”

“It is not bracing,” said I. “It is merely that the wind is blowing from the direction of Sheffield—I would advise you to cover your mouth and nose with your kerchief, sister Pippa. It cannot be healthy for your lungs.”

“Eeh bah gum,” Harry said, “‘appen as brother Pip ‘ere is reet, Mother. We dinnae want thi t'tek ill. By ‘eck. Down t’mill.”

“Harry,” I said slowly—for I had long ago learned that Harry’s thought patterns were things to be approached slowly, much as a mongoose would approach a snake with poor impulse control and a non-existent sense of social responsibility, “Why are you speaking like… that?”

“When in Rome, Pip Bin!” Harry said cheerfully. “Or in this case—when down’t t’mine. T’.”

“But we are not in a mine, Harry,” I pointed out.

“Indeed not!” Pippa said. “We are in a coach and four, speeding northward over hill and dale! Though it _is_ growing rather dark outside.”

And sure enough, when Harry and I looked out of the window, it was to see a sky full of dark and angry looking clouds, roiling across the moor as dramatically as a Frenchman who has just been told that his retirement age has been raised past thirty. “Good heavens!” I cried. “We must seek shelter at once! It is not safe for a female to be so exposed to the unfettered elements.”

“That is very true, dear brother,” Pippa agreed. “Why, it is not unknown for a woman who, having been left unattended in bright light or a strong gale, to sprout a luxurious beard, or to develop a strong urge to wear trousers, or own her own property!”

“A horrifying thought!” I said. How we laughed.

Yet we were far from any bustling provincial town or hospitable inn—the only building which loomed on the horizon was that of a dark manor house, some mile or two distant.

“I don’t know,” Harry said, after I had ordered the coachman to drive us there. “A dark and gloomy manor house, miles from anywhere, isolated in the middle of the Yorkshire moors? I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Do not fear, friend Harry!” I said. “It is most likely not a feeling at all—it is that three pounds of Wensleydale cheese which you have just eaten.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Pip Bin!” Harry said, as the coach pulled in through the gates, trundling along the drive which led to the manor house. “When taken as a small after-lunch snack, cheese does often affect me in that way!”

Even as Harry and I exited the coach to seek shelter from whichever family of honest Yorkshire gentry resided within the manor, the sky opened over our head. It was a torrential downpour, the rain so heavy that we quickly looked as bedraggled as a pair of rats who have just been caught in a torrential rainstorm. The summer sun vanished entirely, and we could see only thanks to the flashes of lightning which lit up the moors. Thunder crashed overhead, loud enough that I could scarcely hear the doorbell as I rang it.

“Gosh,” Harry said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that this weather was an omen, a warning of some hideous, hideous fate which awaits us should we dare to set foot inside this building!”

“Don’t be foolish, Harry Biscuit!” I said, clapping him on the shoulder in a reassuring, manly fashion. “This is modern England, not some Gothic novel. What on earth could you imagine would happen to you inside a foreboding, isolated house in the middle of the Yorkshire moors, during a ferocious thunder storm when no one knows our whereabouts except for the coach driver whom we hired just this morning to show us the most intriguing local sights?”

“I say!” exclaimed Pippa. She had climbed out of the carriage and scurried up the steps to join us. The rain quickly pulled the curl out of her hair, and she had to push the locks out of her face. “Where did the coach driver go?”

“Good heavens,” Harry said, “it’s as if he just vanished into thin air. Can’t think of a possible reason why!”

We had no time for further discussion, for just at that moment the door swung open with a great creak of un-oiled hinges. At first, all was darkness within—and then a figure appeared in the dim light of a single flickering candle. Towering and dark, the man did not speak, and—

“Well _hello_ ,” Pippa said, “You’re a bit of a dish.”

“Pippa Biscuit!” Harry said in ringing tones of scandal. “You’re a newly married woman!”

“I may be newly married,” Pippa said, “but I’m not _dead_.”

The man in the doorway blinked at us. “Leave this place,” he said, and made to close the door.

“I don’t call that very hospitable!” Harry said. “We are three weary travellers—well, four, technically, but we seem to have misplaced our coach driver temporarily—and we are seeking shelter from this sudden storm.”

“Could you not spare us a moment or two by the fire?” I added. “Perhaps a cup of strong tea, to restore warmth and strength to our shivering limbs?”

For a brief moment, I thought my appeal to the man’s sense of English honour, English virtue, English inability not to feel obligated by the social demands of others had worked. Yet it seemed I had underestimated this man’s… well, Yorkshireness. “No,” he said shortly. “Go away.”

“Goodness,” Pippa said, twirling a lock of damp hair around one finger like a Parisian coquette, batting her eyelashes as if she’d just developed a terrible case of lust-induced conjunctivitis. “How… commanding. I do like that in a man.”

“Now just one minute!” Harry said, sounding affronted. “I can be commanding and manly!”

“Oh, do be quiet, Harry,” Pippa said.

“Yes, Pippa,” Harry mumbled, hanging his head. “Sorry, Pippa.”

As Harry and Pippa shared together the joys of their third day of marital bliss, I heard from within the house another voice—this one, too, was deep and gravelly as an unpaved road. “Who is it, Heathcliff?” the second man called.

“No one,” said the first man—Heathcliff—over his shoulder. “They’re just leaving.”

“How do you get your hair to do that?” Pippa asked him. Without my noticing, she had moved closer to him—so close, in fact, that her proximity to him would have been illegal in many American states. Though perhaps it would have been legal in Devon; it would certainly have been encouraged in France. “So that one perfect, dark lock hangs just so over your manly brow?”

“Pippa!” Harry exclaimed. “Now look here, dash it, this doesn’t seem at all the thing!”

“Who are these people?” the second man said, appearing over Heathcliff’s shoulder. He was clearly skilled in the art of looming. Only half his face was illumined by the light of Heathcliff’s candle, and that half was revealed to be craggy and scarred—not enough to be truly frightening, but just enough to be intriguing in a sexy sort of way. In one hand, he carried a volume of Lord Byron’s poetry—a man widely acknowledged to be England’s most panty-droppingly-skilled, if most syphilitic, poet.

“Heavens,” Pippa said. From somewhere in her reticule she had retrieved a fan, which she was now using ostentatiously. “There must be something in the water here. For some unknown reason, my corset feels a little too tight, my under-corset tighter yet, and my custom-fitted anti-man pantaloons quite restricting.”

“Sir,” I said, favouring the newcomer with my best bow. “I fear we have not properly introduced ourselves. My name is Philip Bin. This is my sister, Pippa, and her husband, Mr Harry Biscuit.”

“Rochester,” the newcomer said abruptly. “Edward Rochester.”

“Charmed!” Harry said, giving a cheery little wave. Rochester favoured him with a look as welcoming as an irate badger with a migraine.

“We reside in London,” I continued, undaunted, “but are at present making a tour of the North Country. We find that this present storm hinders our progress across the moors, and came to this house in search of respite from the inclement weather. I was just explaining to your…”

Heathcliff and Rochester exchanged a look. Their eyes glinted strangely in the candlelight; Heathcliff’s strong jaw worked, as if within his manly chest, his heart was being stirred by the most unruly of passions; beside me, for some unknown reason, Pippa let out a strangled whimper. Her fan moved faster.

“Cousin,” Rochester said after a long moment.

“Totally cousins,” Heathcliff added.

“I… see,” I said slowly. For cousins, they seemed to have a very intense relationship, full of unresolved tensions of a kind I couldn’t _quite_ put my finger on. Yet, I reminded myself, this was Yorkshire. Customs were different here. It probably was the done thing here, for two strapping male cousins, dressed in billowing white poet’s shirts and uncomfortably tight-looking trousers, to stare at one another for just a moment too long in an entirely platonic manner.

Pippa clasped her hands over her bosom. “Oh, do that again!” she breathed.

“No,” Rochester told her, then turned to look at me. “We can offer you the hospitality of the house until the storm clears, but then you must leave at once.”

I bowed to him, and then hurriedly ducked inside—Harry and Pippa following me—when Rochester and Heathcliff stepped back from the doorway. “You are very kind, sir. Your hospitality does you both credit, and—”

“Do not speak to me of hospitality, sir!” Heathcliff cut in. “Do not thank me! You will oblige me only by leaving here as soon as you possibly can. These moors are not welcoming to strangers.” Then he stalked out of the entrance hall, taking the lone candle with him. Harry, Pippa, Rochester and I were able to see one another only by the intermittent flashes of lightning which filtered through dusty windows and showed a tall, wood-panelled room, fitted out in a style fashionable some fifty years before. It all seemed as forbidding as a group of maiden aunts who have just been asked to read a moderately racy Italian novel—that is to say, outwardly unwelcoming and frosty, but possessed also of a underlying frisson of intrigue.

“Gosh!” Harry said. “He’s a little bit touchy, isn’t he?”

“My… cousin,” Rochester said, “is a man of deep and sometimes slightly melodramatic emotions. Come, I will show you to the kitchens. You may warm yourselves there in front of the range. We can also find you some tea.”

We followed him through the corridors of the house. In the traditional style of an English manor house, the floorboards creaked and groaned beneath our feet; the eyes of the life-size portraits which lined the walls seemed to follow our progress; cobwebs hung from the ceiling. Open doors afforded me glimpses of shadowy rooms where all the furniture was shrouded in dust cloths. There was indeed no sign that this house had been occupied at all for quite some time. “Has this house been in your family for many years, Mr Rochester?” I enquired.

“Hrm? It’s Heathcliff’s family’s—” he answered in a distracted sort of tone. He appeared to collect himself. “That is to say, it belonged originally to Heathcliff’s mother’s family.”

“How silly of me,” Pippa said. “Originally I thought that you and Mr Heathcliff must be maternal cousins, because of the differing surnames—but now I perceive that it is actually his given name!”

“It is neither given name or surname for him,” Rochester said, leading us down one narrow corridor which promised, thanks to the glow at its far end, to give out into the kitchen. “Heathcliff bears only one name.”

“Only one name?” Pippa exclaimed. “How curious!”

“And yet it is so,” Rochester said. “Like Madonna.”

 _Ah_ , I thought to myself. _The Madonna. Perhaps they are Catholic! This explains much about their behaviour—there is no doubt some French blood in their ancestry_.

The kitchen was a large room, fitted up in the latest style of hygienic, healthy cooking as suggested by the estimable Mrs Beeton. The ceilings were tall and the long pine tables in the centre of the room were scrubbed and scrupulously clean. Stations were set up to be used by the skeleton staff that even such a small household would require—housekeeper, cook, undercook, assistant cook, kitchen maid, scullery maid, butler, footman, coachman, valet, upper housemaid, under housemaid, gardener, lady’s maid, maid-of-all-work, and laundry maid. A great fire roared in the hearth at the far end. In front of it, several dogs napped, each of them no doubt large enough to reach Pippa’s shoulders, if they stood.

“I say!” Harry said, examining the appliances which lined the wall. “You have all the modern conveniences here! A Sanitising Suet Dispenser, a Patent Quadruped Boiler… even that Holy Grail of inventions, the teapot that doesn’t dribble when you pour from it! Gosh, I’ve been trying to get a sample of one of these for months, just to reverse engineer it.”

Rochester cleared his throat. “My wife,” he said, “ordered all that you see here directly from London. She was concerned that the kitchen be properly furnished during our stay here.” For reasons which I did not yet understand, he cast a glance upwards at the ceiling—a glance which seemed almost nervous.

We gathered in front of the fire, the heat from which was strong enough to set our clothes steaming. Harry’s hair frizzed as it always did when it dried, making him look like the unholy offspring of a dandelion and a botanically-inclined poodle—or a dandepoodle, as such a thing is known amongst the fashionable set. I warmed my hands on a cup of strongly brewed tea which Rochester handed to me, and then Rochester, Harry and I made embarrassed small talk of the manly variety as Pippa’s layers of feminine underthings dried and expanded in the heat.

 _Creak_! went her corset.

“Dashed poor weather we’ve been having,” Rochester said, gazing up at the ceiling.

 _Squeak_! went her undercorset.

“Indeed,” I said, somewhat desperately. “More weather than usual for this month.”

 _Ping_! went the elastic in her custom-fitted anti-man pantaloons.

“Ahahahaha,” said Harry, in a slightly more high-pitched tone than was usual.

In an attempt to avoid further mortification by means of my sister’s meteorologically-modified foundation garments, I averted my eyes, looking into the dimly lit far corner of the kitchen—and there all at once I saw something. Something horrible. Two red eyes glowed out at me from the gloom—malevolent and unblinking, like the harbingers of some great evil.

I absolutely did _not_ yelp and drop my cup of tea.

“Southerners,” growled Rochester. “What the deuce is wrong with you? Perfectly good cup of tea.”

“What is that… thing?” I said, pointing at that demonic glare.

Rochester glanced over in that direction. “Oh,” he said dismissively. “That’s just Heathcliff.”

I took a step closer, peering—and the satanic eyes in the corner resolved into the iniquitous gaze of Heathcliff. I peered, and peered some more, and then blinked, as confused as an Irishman who’s just heard of the concept of teetotalism for the first time. “What… is he doing?”

“Sitting upon his brooding perch,” Rochester said, as if that were a matter both obvious and of little consequence.

“His… brooding perch?”

“I have heard of these!” Pippa exclaimed. “All the fashionable young rakes of London now own one. A larger home version, such as this one, may be installed to allow for daily rehearsal of the smouldering eyes, the tight-clenched jaw, the tousled clothing and the aura of repressed-yet-ever-present sexuality which is _de rigueur_ for the young man about town. The portable version is much more suitable for use in places like Hyde Park, where a dandy may situate himself upon one in order to be seen at his best advantage of eligible young ladies driving by!”

“A veritable marvel of modern technology!” I cried. “However did we live before such things were invented!”

“ _I_ do not have a brooding perch,” Harry said plaintively. “But I am all of those things, am I not, dear wife Pippa?”

“Of course you are, Harry dearest,” Pippa said, patting him absently on the arm. “Goodness. Look at how Mr Heathcliff’s shirt billows suggestively over his broad, manly chest, yet clings to the well-developed muscles of biceps.”

There was an awkward silence for a moment as we men tried to ignore the obvious impossibility of an Englishwoman experiencing sexual urges, a silence broken only by the _twang_ of the drying gusseting in Pippa’s Proprietary Patented Triple-Layered Frilly Underthings. Then Harry sniffed. “I smell something.”

“Ah,” Rochester said. “Heathcliff again. You get used to the musky—”

“No,” I said, “I smell it too—and it is not the scent of manly-yet-entirely-non-homoerotic virility. It is… smoke, I believe, coming from upstairs.”

“Heavens!” Pippa exclaimed. “Might the house be on fire?”

“God,” Rochester said, “Not _this_ again. She knows I hate it when she does this,” and he strode from the room, shirt billowing out around him.

Harry, Pippa and I exchanged a look. “It would be frightfully rude to follow a man in his own house, just to see what is going on,” I said.

“Absolutely, Pip Bin!” Harry said, rocking back on his heels. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Never crossed my mind!” Pippa added.

“Oh for God’s sake,” Heathcliff spat from his perch halfway up the wall. “Stop being such a bunch of milksops. If you wish to go see the latest havoc wreaked by Rochester’s wives, then go ahead! Go up those stairs, see those wretches who make of our lives a living torment, who shackle us daily with reminders of our past sins!”

“His _wives_?” I exclaimed. “I knew he must be French!”

We took Heathcliff’s utterances as him granting us full permission to explore the house, and so we hurried out of the kitchen, down a hallway and up a grand flight of stairs, following the smell of burning and the sound of raised voices. The staircase was dim and dark—it was lit only by the occasional flashes of lightning from outside, where the storm still raged, and its dark-panelled walls were broken only by a series of large, full-length portraits.

“These must be Mr Heathcliff’s ancestors,” Pippa said, peering up at the pictures. “From what a noble lineage he is descended!”

“Goodness,” Harry said. “There are many famous names from British history here—Lord Blackadder, Lord Percy Percy, Lord Voldemort...”

“And even some from the continent,” I added. “There is the famous Transylvanian nobleman, Count von Count. I see one, one picture of him… two, two pictures of him… three, three pictures of the Count!”

“And here,” Pippa said, “this very gloomy looking one—the caption at the bottom says that it is of a Lord Vader.”

“Ah,” Harry said, peering at it with all the air of nonchalant knowing to be found on the visage of a gullible member of the nouveau riche visiting Sotheby’s for the first time, “it does indeed seem to have been painted a long time ago, in a place far far away.”

We continued up the stairs and soon found ourselves in a bright, open salon, fitted up in an airy style of the first fashion. Its yellow-papered walls were a bright counterpoint to the dark clouds which could be seen through its tall windows. There were many bookcases, filled to overflowing; several tables, covered with papers and writing implements; and a large number of comfortable-seeming sofas. Almost every surface was covered with evidence of feminine industry—doilies, samplers, antimacassars, promacassars. And there, at the very far end of the room, in front of a brightly glowing fire, sat two women—each of them attending to the pages on the small writing desks in front of them, as diligent and at ease as if Mr Rochester were not haranguing them in a loud and overwrought voice.

One of the two women looked up as we approached. She was petite, with light brown hair smoothed neatly back and possessed of an intelligent-looking pair of green eyes. Her attire spoke of neatness and economy, though the fabric was a rich silk; the only element of disorder in her appearance was her ink-stained fingers. “Ah,” she said, “You’ve let Heathcliff out on the moors again? You know that he _will_ bring strays home, and we’ve not yet finished repainting after the last pitchfork-wielding mob tried to storm the house, looking for missing villagers. The housemaids are still quite put out, you know.”

Rochester’s jaw clenched. “Jane, for the hundredth time—elf, sprite and salamander you may be; ogre and ghoul I most certainly am; but Heathcliff does _not_ drink of the blood of—”

The woman sitting opposite Jane spoke for the first time. She had a low, melodious voice which carried a trace in it of distant climes—more distant even than Bristol, or the exotic Bognor Regis. Her dark hair was coiled in beautiful braids on top of her head, and she did not look up from her work as she spoke. “Edward,” she said, “you are not being very hospitable to our guests. Just because we are in Yorkshire does not mean we should be ill-mannered.”

He bristled. “How dare you call me—”

“The attic incident, Edward,” the woman said, her pen still moving easily across the page.

“Yes, Bertha,” Rochester said. His clasped hands were as white knuckled as an Italian soldier who’s just been told he may have to go into battle and _not_ run away. “Allow me to introduce Mr Philip Bin, of London; his friend, Mr Harry Biscuit; and Mr Biscuit’s wife, Pippa.”

“Charmed,” I said.

“Delighted!” Harry said, with a cheery wave of his hand.

“Are you really _both_ married to Mr Rochester?” Pippa said. “I mean, good work, ladies! But however did you manage _that_?”

“Well, that is a very long tale,” Jane said.

“And,” Bertha said, “one shortly to be published in London, in three handsome volumes, by the publishers Smith, Elder and Company.”

“Goodness!” Pippa said, entranced, taking a seat on the sofa next to Jane. “You are authors? Even though you are both of a feminine persuasion?”

“We shall be publishing under a pseudonym, so Currer Bell will be the author of _New Moon Eclips’d: A Tale of Gothic Passion, Despair and Romance That’s Kind of Creepy if You Think About It. An Autobiography_ , but yes, we are writers,” said Jane.

“A snappy title!” Harry said. “I’d buy it!”

“Thank you,” Jane said calmly, “We are aiming it at the Christmas market.”

“I shall not stand around listening to this,” Rochester said, and strode towards the doorway.

“Do close the door behind you,” Bertha said. “The sounds of the bed springs echo terribly when you and Heathcliff—”

She broke off suddenly. She and Jane looked at one another, and then at us. “They are cousins, you know,” she said to us.

“Totally cousins,” Jane added.

“Mr Heathcliff seems a friendly sort of chap!” Harry said.

Jane and Bertha looked at him and blinked slowly, in almost perfect unison—a reaction which I confess I had often seen people have around Harry. “Indeed,” they said, in tones as disbelieving as a matronly chaperone who has just been told that their charge wishes to go outdoors in a dress short enough that a man might catch sight of her ankle, given a following wind and a fortuitous angle of the head.

“Heavens,” Pippa said, peering in to get a better glimpse of the manuscript on Jane’s lap. “You do use that word a lot—and underlined, too. And I have not seen that word used outside of… uh, outside of penny dreadfuls which I as an upstanding young Englishwoman have absolutely never read, Pip or Harry.”

“We intend to start a literary revolution with our work,” Jane said.

“So I see,” Pippa said. “This Mr Dorchester is certainly revolving on Mr Moorcrag’s—” She paused and tilted her head. “Is that anatomically possible?”

Jane and Bertha exchanged a look. “You know,” Bertha said, “I think Cathy would quite like her.”

“She _does_ seem to share an enthusiasm for the work,” Jane said.

“Is Cathy another cousin of yours?” Harry asked.

One corner of Jane’s mouth quirked up. “I think you could say that we three are indeed… cousins of a sort.”

“Totally cousins,” Bertha agreed, and reached over to lay one hand over Pippa’s, her gaze intense. “Tell me, Pippa—have you ever heard of the concept of a women’s separatist writers’ commune?”

From outside came one final clap of thunder, one last flash of lightning, as the storm clouds finally began to roll away overhead. Inside, however, it felt as if the temperature had risen all of a sudden—Pippa flushed and giggled; I felt the sudden and inexplicable urge to stick my fingers in my ears, hum _la la la_ and pretend that my sister was still five years old; and Harry… well, poor Harry let out a gasp of sudden and painful realisation.

“ _Good grief! Still marooned in darkest Yorkshire, in a house full of suffragists and secret French-Yorkshire hybrids! Harry, forced to think! And yet you lived to tell the tale—what happened?”_

 _“That is a story for another day. Return next week, and you shall hear all—how Pippa became embroiled in a radical, pantaloon-wearing movement for the emancipation of women; how Harry discovered he had a pathological fear of humorously shaped vegetables; how we eventually made our escape, using only a balloon and one unfortunate horse; and how the moors of Yorkshire had in store for me a surprise that was unexpectedly… bleak._ ”


End file.
